Hush? Interesting article today…

Remember our discussion about “hushed, quiet” museums? Well, you may be interested n this share from Great Britain….it’s today’s post from the Museums Association Journal by Richard Wendorf, Issue 115/02, pg. 14, 2.02.15

About a year ago, I visited my friend Steven Parissien at Compton Verney, where he is the director, to see the exhibition of English landscapes he had curated.

It was a rich, lovely show and, as we wandered from room to room, we became quite animated. At one point, we were approached by someone who had broken away from a tour of the gallery. “Don’t you realise this is a museum?” he asked.

“You’re making so much noise that we can’t hear what our guide is saying.”

We bit our tongues and gave each other a bemused look. Later, however, as I made my way back to my own museum, I entertained several conflicting thoughts.

The first was an appreciation of the irony of the situation, in which two museum directors had to be reminded where they were standing. The second was that it was terrific that these museum-goers were hanging on to a guide’s every word. The third was a sense of mild embarrassment that our excitement had distracted other visitors.

But my final response, which I wish to examine here, was to think more generally about the kind of behaviour we would like to see displayed by visitors. Don’t we, more than anything, want people to become engaged with what they are viewing, and isn’t a vigorous conversation just what the arts should generate?

Why should galleries become hushed temples of visual culture? Isn’t there room for a museum of exuberance, both in the art that is displayed and in our reaction to it?

And now the caveats. I am not condoning any kind of behaviour that is so intrusive that it prevents other visitors from concentrating on the art on display.

We have all had exasperating experiences of this kind, often in large museums, where surging crowds focus on a particular iconic object, cameras in hand and phones at the ready. Some may see this as engagement, while others will see it as disrespectful to the art and distracting to other visitors.

I don’t wish to adjudicate these disputes. However, I do wonder just how our galleries devoted to painting, sculpture, prints and drawings became the hushed and hallowed sepulchres they often appear to be – or aspire to be. Like others, I have argued that libraries, museums and concert halls have become the chapels and cathedrals of an increasingly secularised society.

Libraries and concert halls naturally call for a respectful silence, as readers and listeners engage with texts and performances. But is a hushed atmosphere the healthiest way in which to engage with visual art? And isn’t an exchange between viewers one of the social and cultural productions that artists hope to generate?

I was a trustee of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts for a decade before moving to the UK, and nothing gave me more pleasure than taking my children through its galleries on Saturday mornings. I always gave them the same assignment: after half an hour or so, tell me which one painting you would like to take home and why.

They loved this exercise and excelled at it, blending emotional responses with increasingly solid aesthetic ones. And they both became excited, just as Steven and I had done, and inevitably caused a raised eyebrow or two. I thought that was fine then – and I still do today.

Nothing gives me more satisfaction in my own museum than hearing animated conversation and laughter well up within the central hallway of the manor house. I sometimes take a look down at our visitors from my perch on the top floor to see what they are responding to – and then I return to my office and, if necessary, shut the door.

Richard Wendorf is the director of the American Museum in Britain, Bath